Basic White Bread for Beginners

An easy bread recipe that's perfect for beginners, this basic white bread recipe will make two delicious loaves. Once you discover just how easy it is to make fresh, homebaked bread, it will quickly become a staple at your dinner table and it makes a great sandwich bread.

This recipe uses all the basic bread ingredients: flour, milk, water, yeast, sugar, and salt. It takes just about 20 minutes to prepare the dough, then an hour wait to allow the dough to rise. After a final kneading and shaping of your loaves, a second rise takes place before it's baked.

Your finished bread can be served fresh out of the oven or frozen for later use. Because it is such a basic recipe, you can also experiment with it by adding a cup of raisins, nuts or other flavorings.

How to Make It

Prepare the Bread Dough

Mix the ingredients to form the dough, which takes about 10 to 15 minutes.

Heat 1 cup of milk and 2 tablespoons of butter in a small saucepan over medium heat. Remove from the heat when the butter is melted and set aside to cool.

Pour 1/2 cup of warm water into a small bowl. Slowly pour the yeast into the bowl while stirring. The constant stirring while adding the yeast will prevent it from clumping. Set the bowl of yeast water aside for about 5 minutes while you work on the next two steps.

In a large bowl, add the sugar, salt and 1 cup of warm water. Mix well.

Check the saucepan of milk and butter. If the contents are warm to the touch, pour the liquid into the large bowl and mix.

Pour the yeast water into the large bowl. It is important that the batter is warm, not boiling hot. Hot liquid, such as the milk you heated up, will kill the dry yeast and prevent the bread from rising.

Begin mixing in the unbleached bread flour, one cup at a time. By the fifth cup of flour, the dough will begin to get stiff and it will be difficult to mix it with a wooden spoon.

Knead the Dough and Wait for It to Rise

Next, comes the hands-on part of making dough. This is where things can get a little messy, so don't wear your best clothes and be sure to remove your rings before kneading.

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured board and begin to knead the dough.

Continue adding more flour - a couple tablespoons at a time - and knead the flour into the dough until the dough is smooth and no longer sticky. How much flour you use will depend on many factors, including the temperature, humidity and altitude of your home. It's likely that you will not use all 6 or 7 cups.